by Peter James
And stood still, listening. Shaking and sweating heavily again. What if—?
Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no way she has got out of that bathtub.
Even so, it took some moments before he dared step forward and switch on the torch again. Swallowing hard, he walked up to the bathroom door and stopped, scared to go inside. He inched forward, shuffling, then took a bold step and shone the beam straight at her. And froze.
She was staring back at him.
‘Shit!’
He dropped the phone onto the linoleum floor and backed out of the room, colliding clumsily and painfully with the door. His heart was jumping all over the place.
Surely her eyes had been shut when he’d left her?
Calm down, calm down.
He knelt and picked up the phone and saw to his relief the screen wasn’t broken, then pointed the beam back at her. She lay in the position he had left her. But had her eyes been open? He tried to remember, to think back.
They must have been open.
Must have been.
No way could she have opened them after—
No way.
He went back out into the living room. Get a grip. He went over to the table where the ashtray was. With trembling, gloved fingers, he opened the bin bag, then tipped the butts out into the ashtray. Lorna did not smoke, she had given up some years ago, but told him that Corin was a heavy smoker. He mashed each of the butts in turn into the ashtray, making it look as if they’d been stubbed out there. Then he realized there was no ash.
He lit a cigarette and smoked it hard and fast, tipping off the ash after each long drag. He stubbed it out and put it in his pocket. He lit another and smoked that too, and again put the stub in his pocket.
Next, he tipped the contents of the ashtray into a carrier bag he found in a kitchen drawer. Then, with his gloved hands, he pulled out the two beer cans and also placed them in the carrier bag.
Come on, think clearly! Focus!
He put the printed circuit board on the floor just under the bed, out of sight.
He peered back into the bathroom. Shone the beam across Lorna one more time. Then at the cable from the plug socket into the bath. Then at Lorna again.
How had this happened?
He perched on a chair, thinking again. Trying to wind the clock back.
Please could he wake up tomorrow and find this had all been just a terrible dream? He would give anything, anything in the world, for that to happen. But it wasn’t going to happen. He was going to wake up tomorrow – if he could even sleep a wink tonight – and nothing was going to be changed.
Lorna would still be dead.
Murdered.
By her husband?
Or suicide?
The electrician would most probably discover her. And then?
Had he covered his tracks well enough? Enough to put Corin in the frame rather than himself?
Could he ever really get away with this? Or live with himself?
He shone the beam all around the bathroom again. Above him, very faintly, he could hear laughter. Some television show. He went back into the living room. What had he forgotten? Missed? What would a crime scene investigator find? A smart detective?
What damned trace?
It was on the wall, right in front of him. He couldn’t believe it. Could not believe he had been so careless, so stupid. Where had he parked his damned brain?
They’d always had two photographs of themselves in here. One he had taken and disposed of, the framed one of them at Wolstonbury, which had been standing on the table. The other hung on the wall, a selfie Lorna had taken at the beauty spot near Eastbourne, Beachy Head. They stood close together, his arm round her, both grinning, with the English Channel behind them.
The thought flashed through his mind that Beachy Head was the country’s most popular suicide destination. A sheer drop of over five hundred feet onto rocks. That was one option right at this moment. He could be there in half an hour.
Maybe that’s what he should do. Just bloody end it.
As long as he had everything covered, so his wife and daughter would never have to endure the shame. The shame of knowing what he had done.
He pulled the photograph off the wall and tucked it inside his jacket. Reaching the door, he placed the carrier bag on the floor, as if it was waiting to be taken to the dustbin. Then he hurried downstairs.
As he stepped out of the entrance porch and onto the pavement, he kept his head down. Glancing quickly around, he couldn’t see anyone.
But the man standing invisibly in his own shadow on the far side of the road could see him.
Not that he really cared now if anyone did see him. In an hour he could be dead.
All the same, as he headed towards his car, he emptied the cigarette butts from his pocket and tossed them onto the pavement. I’m a naughty litter lout, he thought.
But sod it.
One hour.
One hour and he might be out of here. Gone.
He’d be litter himself.
20
Wednesday 20 April
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep . . .
The words of a poem he had once read went round in his brain, like a needle stuck in a vinyl groove. He was trying to remember who wrote it, as he drove along the narrow, winding black ribbon of road leading up to Beachy Head. To his left, invisible now in the dark, was a vast open landscape of South Downs farmland, and to his right a short expanse of grass and then the sheer cliff edge, with sky beyond. And sea below.
The Seven Sisters. A series of cliffs rising sheer out of the English Channel. It was a long drop almost anywhere along it, but the highest point was Beachy Head. Certain death. Tried and tested. So long as you went off in the right place.
He’d never been good with heights, but they fascinated him. Often as a boy he’d lean over railings and peer down, wondering what the falling sensation would be like. Would you be liberated knowing that in moments, at the end of your fall, there would be nothing any more? No you. Gone.
Was it going to hurt, your very last moment?
He was wondering that now.
Wondering if it would hurt, and trying to think who had written that damned poem.
Strange, he thought, as his headlights picked up the movement of sheep over to his left, he had a few times in the past joked with friends about what each of them would do if given just twenty-four hours to live. Sex, food and booze always featured heavily in everyone’s answer. But now that he had just minutes, he wasn’t thinking about any of those things. He was trying to remember the name of a damned poet, and wondering if death would hurt.
Would it be instant? Or would he lie there on the rocks, his bones all smashed to pieces, but conscious for seconds, minutes, maybe hours, while his life ebbed away?
And still trying to think of the name of the poet.
It didn’t matter. He felt calm. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this calm in his life. All that had happened this evening had receded into a hazy past. His family had too. Everything seemed so very simple, as if he had taken some kind of a happy pill.
Who wrote that poem?
Not that it mattered; not that anything would matter in a few minutes’ time, ever again. Not to him.
The road signs flashed past. Five miles . . . Two miles . . . Then soon after he saw ahead of him the illuminated sign of the Beachy Head Hotel.
It might have been a hotel once, but these days the long, low building was just a pub and restaurant, serving drinks and food to visitors at this famous beauty spot, and the hikers walking the South Downs Way. But to his relief there weren’t many hikers – or visitors – to this desolate, windy, rain-swept spot, twenty miles east of Brighton, at 11 p.m. on a Wednesday night in April. In fact, judging from the empty car park, there did not appear to be any at all.
He drove into a bay, careful to align his car between two white lines. Why, he was
n’t sure. Probably because he had a naturally tidy mind, he thought. He didn’t like the idea of his car being reported to the police tomorrow morning. Badly parked, straddled two bays, selfish bastard.
As he killed the engine the dashboard lights went off. He sat there in the darkness, feeling the elements rocking the car. Oblivion was just a few hundred windy, salty, rain-lashed yards away.
So easy.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
Who wrote it? Who? Come on, come on, I won’t bite!
He was momentarily startled by headlights looming out of the darkness behind him. Then he heard the sound of a car passing at speed, and his calm returned.
I am doing the right thing.
There was no other realistic option.
I’m a murderer.
Are you?
No. Of course not.
Someone had gone in there, during the time I was out walking around. That was the killer. I could never have killed anyone, could I?
All kinds of memories tugged at him, but he ignored them. Just step over the edge in the right place – and he knew more or less where that was – and then . . .
Nothing.
The stuff that was there before existence began, would still be there after it ended.
The void would always win. It just played a waiting game, that was all.
He debated for some moments whether to phone his wife. Confess. Tell her what he was about to do – the decent thing.
But he couldn’t face that.
He could send her a note. And say what? He pulled his phone out and began writing a text.
Darling, a situation has happened. I
He stopped. Deleted it. There wasn’t anything he could think of that would make any sense. Instead, opening the car door, he climbed out. Instantly he felt the force of the wind making it hard to stand still, and the rain, hard as shotgun pellets, against his face. Pressing the key fob, he locked the doors. Not that he would care whether the car was stolen or not.
Goodbye, cruel world.
Getting drenched – but who cared? – he walked up the steep incline, guided by the beam of light from his phone, then crossed the road. Over to his left some lights in the Beachy Head Hotel were on. Perhaps it was still open? He was tempted to walk over to the place, have a pint, maybe two, maybe three – and some whisky chasers. To give him courage.
Dutch courage, they called it, although he wasn’t exactly sure why. Something from way back in history, during the Thirty Years War, when Dutch soldiers drank gin to calm their nerves and give them courage in battle.
Dutch courage would have been good now.
Instead he walked up a steep bank, and then strode across wet grass towards – total darkness.
The clifftop. The rocks and the black water at the bottom.
The wind seemed to increase in strength the nearer to the edge he walked.
As did the darkness.
Way in the distance he saw a tiny speck of light. A ship. Everyone on it as unaware of him as he was of them. They didn’t know that earlier this evening he had murdered a woman. His lover.
Except he hadn’t, had he?
Life could never be the same again.
But whatever, there was nothing he could do to change the fact that she was dead. Nothing he could do to bring Lorna Belling back to life.
Nothing.
He did not know when he had last prayed. Not since early childhood, when he used to pray for things he wanted for Christmas or his birthday. A radio-controlled aeroplane. A BMX bike.
Not really a great relationship to have with God, based on want this, want that, won’t pray again if I don’t get . . .
But then again, where was God in his hour of need?
Not here, for sure.
Life was much simpler for animals. He and his wife had had a German Shepherd dog called Romy, who had lived to twelve. Her back legs had eventually gone and she was a pitiful sight, dragging herself around the garden, desperately trying to still be her old self. The vet had told them that it had come to the point where it was cruel to keep her alive, because she was suffering so much. A few days later they’d agreed with him. He came to their house with a veterinary nurse, and gave Romy an injection to put her to sleep. Within moments the wonderful, bright, intelligent dog was dead. No longer suffering. Alive one second, gone the next.
Why not with humans too?
He was about to find out, he thought, as he approached the cliff edge, shining his phone torch beam down at the long, wet grass bent in the wind. Through the howl of the wind he could hear the sea, a long way below.
Moments later, a beam of light danced in front of him, crossing his.
Then he heard a bluff, friendly voice right behind him.
‘Hello!’
He turned.
A middle-aged, bearded man in a sou’wester stood there, holding a powerful torch. ‘Just checking you are OK, sir?’
‘OK?’
‘You are a bit near the edge. We’ve had a lot of erosion recently. It’s not safe to get too close – some of the chalk is very unstable.’
‘I see. Thanks for the warning.’
‘Would you like to have a chat?’
‘Chat?’ he said, blankly.
‘I’m with the Beachy Head Chaplaincy Service – my name’s Bill, what’s yours?’
‘It’s – Robert,’ he said. ‘Robert Frost.’ Remembering the poet now.
‘Is everything all right? Not a nice night to be out, and with these strong gusts of wind it can be even more dangerous than normal near the edge.’
‘No, all’s fine,’ he said. ‘Absolutely fine. I’m – I’m working on a poem – I thought I’d come here for some inspiration.’
‘You’re a poet?’
‘I am, yes.’
‘Robert Frost’s your name?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’ll keep a lookout for your work, Mr Frost.’
‘Yes, good, thank you.’
‘So, OK, you’re absolutely sure everything is all right?’
‘All good, thank you.’
Actually, it wasn’t. It wasn’t all good. He’d just realized he’d left on the passenger seat of the car the photograph of himself and Lorna – the second one that he’d noticed and taken down from the wall.
As he walked back towards it, he was aware of the Good Samaritan from the Chaplaincy following him at a distance.
He got back in, closed the door and switched on the ignition. His brain was such a jumble, a million thoughts all broken loose from their mountings. He had to stop somewhere, stop and think.
Think.
And find a bin and dump the photograph.
And then?
He didn’t know.
Go back to Beachy Head? Just drive over a cliff somewhere nearby?
A song was playing on the radio. It had been playing the first time he and Lorna had made love and it had kind of become their song. Billy Joel’s ‘Uptown Girl’.
Shit.
So many memories. So many beautiful ones.
What a bloody mess I’ve made of everything.
He shivered, suddenly realizing he was freezing cold. It would be cold in the mortuary, too. Lorna would be lying in there tomorrow. And if they found him? Would they be in the same mortuary together?
He shivered again.
The car rocked in the wind.
Thinking. What? What? What was he going to do?
Throw himself out into that inky, cold darkness?
I don’t have to.
I’ve covered my tracks.
I didn’t do it.
21
Thursday 21 April
Andreas Thomas, the German lawyer whom Sandy had appointed as her executor, spoke reasonably good English, but Roy Grace sometimes found him hard to understand on the phone, and the conversation was a lengthy one as he had to ask him to repeat himself frequently.
The documentation allowing Sandy’s body to be repatriated t
o England had been completed, and a firm of funeral directors in Brighton had everything in hand. The funeral had been booked for the following Thursday at the vast Hove Cemetery, coincidentally where both of Sandy’s grandparents were buried. His own had been cremated at what Roy thought was the much prettier Woodvale. He had still not yet decided which of the options he would choose for himself. Neither appealed that much. It was something he knew he should confront but – and he knew it was stupid – it felt that to make the choice was almost inviting his own death.
Many German wills did not include funeral instructions because, Andreas Thomas explained, often they would not be discovered or read until many weeks after death. The lawyer agreed that burial would be the better option for Sandy.
The one grey area currently was Sandy’s substantial estate. A short while before she had left Roy, Andreas Thomas informed him, she’d had a windfall inheritance from an aunt that she’d kept secret, instructing the funds to be sent to a numbered Swiss bank account, clearly in preparation for leaving Roy. It could even have been this inheritance that gave her the courage to leave him, the lawyer speculated. Sandy had left clear instructions that almost her entire estate be put in trust to pay for private education for Bruno, until the age of twenty-one, when he would receive the balance of the money. The estate was now worth four million euros.
In the weeks before her accident, Sandy had been anxious to establish this trust and to Roy’s dismay had left instructions in her will for her parents to be appointed fellow trustees, along with the Munich lawyer.
Grace told the lawyer that he wasn’t worried about the money. He would take responsibility for Bruno, and bring him back to live with himself, Cleo and Noah, in England, and would put him into a good school – the money to pay for it could be sorted out in due course. He wanted to make sure he was in the driving seat on this one, not Sandy’s parents.
He arranged to meet Andreas Thomas at his office in Munich the following morning. As he ended the call, he was about to dial his travel agent when his work phone rang. It was the duty Ops-1, Inspector David Graham, known to everyone by his initials, DG, in the Comms department, which was housed in a modern block on the far side of the Police HQ campus from the Specialist Crime Command offices. A call from him was not going to be good news.